The newly enhanced Android app makes it easier to get started, add SmartThings devices and other popular smart products, and use the app to customize all of the smart objects in your home. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve done to help you get more value out of SmartThings:

Connect & customize devices, see what’s happening at home, and control things from the Dashboard.

Among the first new features in the new SmartThings experience that you’ll notice is a brand-new Dashboard. The Dashboard is where you can connect new devices, customize existing devices, see what is happening in your home, and control your connected things. It is organized into five categories that capture the most-common SmartThings use cases: Home & Family, Doors & Locks, Lights & Switches, Danger & Damages, and Motion.

When you first see the Dashboard, it will display instructional cards that highlight what is possible within each category. By tapping on the gear icon to the right of each category, you’ll see easy-to-follow prompts that make it a breeze to get your smart devices to do what you want. These prompts capture the most common SmartApps that customers have downloaded. So in most cases, you can customize everything directly from the Dashboard and won’t have to search for the SmartApp that fits your needs. (Note: SmartApps are still available. Just tap on the top-left Menu to open ‘em up.)

After configuring your devices, you can see what’s happening within each category at a glance, and also control lights, locks, and other devices–directly from the Dashboard.

One of our favorite parts of the new SmartThings experience is called Hello, Home. As the name implies, Hello, Home lets you customize your home to react to your unique daily patterns, and also tell it what you’re up to so it can adapt when your plans and routines change. For those of you who are familiar with “Modes,” Hello, Home makes it much easier to change modes automatically or on the go.

Start by customizing your home to automatically do certain things (or stop doing certain things) when you’re home, away, or asleep. When SmartThings either changes modes or performs different actions at a set time, the app will send you a message. These messages let you see what’s happening in your home now, and what’s happened recently. You can also send your home messages like “I’m back!” or “Goodbye!” and it will automatically adapt to your preferences.

The “Activity Feed” is found within “Hello, Home.” Here, you can easily see what is happening at a glance with all of your connected devices, see how they’re interacting with each other, and get instant alerts at the first sign of excess water, tampering, or danger.

A Note to Existing Users

For those who already have SmartThings, you may be wondering, “How do I find my connected things? Are my SmartApps gone? Do I need to reconfigure everything?” The short answer is all your Things and SmartApps will continue to work the way they have previously. You can use the left-hand menu at any time to switch from the Dashboard to the tile-based view of all your Things.

That said, your Things won’t be visible in the Dashboard until you have configured the Dashboard. And to make that migration as easy as possible, you will notice that they can “auto import devices” within the Home & Family and Lights & Switches categories with a simple push of a button. Easy peasy. And totally worth it.

The new app is filled with tons of instructional screens to guide you through the new setup process step by step. Once you’re up and running, we think you’ll find that it offers a much smoother, easier experience. And if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@smartthings.com.

Thanks for all of your feedback and support. We will continue to improve our Android app, and are committed to delivering a SmartThings experience that takes advantage of Android’s unique features. We hope you enjoy this latest iteration.

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Had to switch back to the old version. This version took all of the things I didnt like with the Iphone version and brought it to android.

Lurking_Grue

Is there any way to get rid of this dashboard? It’s a bitch to customize. It shows one of my locks as a shortcut but I can’t seem to get the other one to show up. It shows two switches but not the ones I would want. Damn I hate these app that try to make things easy on you and manages to always do the wrong thing. Would love it if I could just default the view to “Things” but no such feature.

Lurking_Grue

Can we also have a button right up front to see a log of everything that has occurred instead I have to hit the voice button and then the heartbeat button. GAH! Thanks for all the extra button pushes.

Lurking_Grue

Why cant I choose what shortcuts are on the dashboard??? The hell?

AR

I did a Google search for the ETA on the Android dashboard today and this blog entry thankfully came up. Would be nice to notify customers directly. Thanks for including us with the dominant OS! Excited to program some functions.

Lurking_Grue

I guess if I want my light shortcuts to be in a useful order I have to rename all my switches with 01_ 02_ 03_ otherwise my least useful buttons show up first.

This is one of the major problems with the dashboard it just dumps your stuff in alphabetical order and then only shows you two of them until you click the title.

This app spends it’s time trying to be animated and with GIANT buttons but didn’t actually make things more usable.

At least give us the option to default the interface into “Things” as I can then actually sort these buttons in useful order.

Why do I have the horrible feeling you guys are going to eventually ditch that view and go more in the direction of this dashboard.

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A couple points I hope will help. 1) Reordering the shortcuts will come to Android. 2) Whichever view you leave the app from, will open up next time you come back to the app. 3) Dashboard, like all parts of the app, will evolve. This evolution is hardest for those of us that are used to a certain way of doing things – me included. I hope you give it some time.

Lurking_Grue

It needs to evolve as it is just not that useful right now. Huge amounts of screen space are taken up and the thing bounces all over the place. Not sure if I would ever use “Damage & Danger” and yet now I am stuck with that taking up so much space and please make the activity feed a little less burried,

I have to give it a chance as I have not choice short of breaking out your API and writing my own.

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You’ll soon be able to choose the dashboards you want from inside the app, but if you find you want to customize that now, you can do so from the API site: (https://graph.api.smartthings.com/) – Just head into your location and click the List Solutions link near the bottom of the page.

GOP

With the new Android app I lost the way to create custom modes or change to a mode. For instance, I realize I can set actions through Hello World, but there’s no way for me to simply go in and manually change to “Night” or “Movies” mode anymore in the app?

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This ability is still there. Now the same mechanisms are in place within Hello, Home. You can create a Movies phrase/mode *(by tapping the gear icon at the bottom of the Hello, Home screen) and then select it from within Hello, Home. (also you can still add modes from your Location Settings)

Léandre Thibodeau

I think that people should wait before to update the android app. the new version is a bit laggy and have a lot of bugs.

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I’m interested to hear what it is you find buggy in the new app. Obviously they should also be reported to support@smartthings.com too!

Léandre Thibodeau

Devices status are not updated correctly. Some app like the “power allowance” not working anymore. I have sent a detailed email this morning. :) I’m sure smartthings will find a solution as they always do.

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Ok – Thanks for the reply and for sending it in. We’ll get it sorted – fast I hope!